Myths about Islamic Resistance History in Palestine w/Mujamma Haraket

Adnan Husain: salam hello peace to you all welcome to the program i'm adnan hussein historian of the medieval mediterranean and islamicate worlds at queen's university back with another edition on a very important and relevant topic historically and in terms of contemporaneous politics many people have heard of The characterization of the Islamic resistance, particularly Hamas, as something invented by Israel or supported in its origins by Israel, renewed kind of allegations and myths perpetuated, particularly after October 7th. And this has caused a fair bit of confusion about how to characterize and understand and show solidarity and relationship to the Islamic resistance during the course of the genocide and in many ways was used to undermine some components of that solidarity with the resistance in Palestine. So what is the real truth of these allegations that have been made in various different ways about Qatari money and support being funneled, about it being used as a counterweight and so forth. Here to help us unpack this is a scholar who I will introduce in a moment, but who wrote a very important article in Electronic Intifada that is called Debunking the Lie that, quote, Israel created Hamas. And it's written by Mujammah Harakat, who is a translator, academic researcher in political philosophy with a specialization in non-state actors, political Islam, and the history of the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas in particular. His writings have appeared in many academic and scholarly journals, but as well on his own substack. I encourage everyone to go Find the Substack site and become a subscriber there, Mujamma, at Mujamma Haraket. And I will put, of course, the description and links in the video and audio descriptions for this episode. But also you can find in Orinoco Tribune and Liberated Texts. Mujamma, welcome to the program. It is such an honor to have you with us here to talk about this important topic.

Mujamma Haraket: Thank you very much for having me, Adnan. It's my pleasure to be here.

Adnan Husain: Well, I thought perhaps the first thing to start with on this topic is, why did you think it was important to address this topic? And I also note that you cite yourself that there has been good scholarship that has debunked some components of this. in the past, even published in scholarly work and in electronic intifada. What did you think was important about readdressing and investigating this topic at this time?

Mujamma Haraket: Indeed, there has been a significant body of debate between two scholars in particular, one by the name of Beverly Milton Edwards and another by the name of Khaled Ghurub. Now, the first, Beverly Milton Edwards, belongs to what some categorize as the modernist school of IR, international relations, and in particular within the field of Palestine studies, takes a modernist approach, meaning that there's a certain teleological bent where that which progress consists in inherently involves secularization, involves democratization, and for beverly milton edwards this was part and parcel of the plo project such that any income any project that was born autonomously from it was met with some due suspicion and this is how the islamic resistance movement and its antecedent the Islamic movement are treated in Beverly Milton Edwards' 1999 book, Muslim Revivalism, Islamic Politics in Palestine, which Khaled Khurub reviewed for the Journal of Palestine Studies shortly after it was published. And in there, Hurub lauds facets of the book, which indeed are well researched, but also takes issue, and this is a significant portion of the review, with Milton Edwards' characterization and thesis that the Palestinian Islamic movement evolved in the first half of the 1970s, from sanction by the occupation, their patronage, because she argues that, quote, there is no question as to the existence of Israeli Muslim Brotherhood collusion, unquote. And the evidence that she relies on are certain witness accounts who belonged to the Fatah party, And this, although in the space of a shorter review, Hrub is not able to deal with the granular details of this issue, was telling for me. This was when I first became most interested in this issue. And then Hrubin, his seminal book, which was published a few years later, also has a section where, I believe, really galvanized and precipitated by this review. He deals with the issue in a bit more length. The book is Hamas Political Thought and Practice, which was published for the Institute of Palestine Studies in 2002. I highly recommend the book. It is still important for understanding the history of Hamas and understanding it from what I would argue is one of the seminal texts about its history and its political theory. And there too, Khroub deals with the myth as it had been proffered by scholars like Milton Edwards and a few others. However, there have since then been neoteric elements added to this myth. It has seen its own revival. In the face of the genocide, there have been references to, quote, Netanyahu funding Hamas. And the reason that those who made this claim would produce it is vis-a-vis what were really negotiations between Hamas and the occupation following the Great March of Return and the 2018-2019 period, where funds were allotted from Qatar for infrastructure projects that the occupation initially did not allow for, despite coming to an agreement. for almost a period of a year, found ways to block the funds from being allocated. But after some armed resistance operations, rockets that were aimed towards Greenbelt settlements, Gaza envelope settlements, they were finally allotted. However, there was a very strenuous system, credit cards were issued, that the PA had control over such that every person who received these funds would be accounted for and such that did not end up going to the Qassam Brigade. This was exclusively infrastructure projects, electricity and fishing that these funds were allowed to bolster. So this is all to say that when the claim that Israel funded Hamas was reintroduced, It was never contextualized within the Great March of Return negotiations, which also, it should be noted, were often regarded even by some respectable scholars as entirely unsuccessful, which I think was a mischaracterization of them. In any case, so these were two of the reasons and the third, perhaps the most important reason that precipitated my interest in analyzing this history with more depth is that It precedes even the existence of Hamas, and it involves the Islamic movement, and it involves witness accounts that have their own genealogy, and actors continue to reappear, such as Muhammad Dahlan, as propagators of this myth. And today, Muhammad Dahlan is known to be living in the United Arab Emirates as an advisor to Mohammed bin Ziyad. So there are reasons to, I think, inherently be suspicious, particularly knowing that Da'lan in the 2006-2007 period worked with Keith Dayton of the United States military to undercut Hamas after the elections, after the Palestinian Legislative Council elections of 2006. So this too spurred my suspicion and interest in wanting to look at the genealogy of this narrative.

Adnan Husain: Excellent framing. I mean, that's so interesting about the threads that you were following here and about the revival of this kind of set of associations and myth and narrative characterization to delegitimize the Islamic resistance. You know, one other kind of framing point I think that you make in the article that's worth emphasizing and perhaps elaborating on at this moment is also what is the effect or consequence and value and use of this myth, which also partly helps explain its persistence despite You know, being debunked in various ways earlier in earlier scholarship, but then revived and with new elements added, as you were just telling us in the October 11th kind of context politically, which is this kind of assumption that underlies the delegitimizing of any historical agency for Palestinians and especially Palestinian resistance as part of a psychological war that emphasizes and portrays Israel as somehow behind every development that takes place and as knowing and guiding and shaping the political realities in a sort of totalizing way. And I'm wondering if maybe you might also elaborate a little bit on how this rather pernicious understanding undermines a real sense of an appreciation for the actual history of Palestinian resistance and political agency.

Mujamma Haraket: Indeed. So if one reviews those chief propagators of the myth, one will find that in addition to figures like Dalan, who come from within Palestinian society, there are also figures like Avner Cohen and Yossef Melman, a number of intelligence agency related, particularly those close to the Shabbat, the Shin Bet, who have produced this narrative in the pages of Yediot Arnot or Haaretz. The the political wing that those like Yitzhak Segev, who in March 1981 was then the military governor of occupied Gaza, and informed David K. Shibler who was a journalist for the New York Times that in fact it was the case that the occupation, the Israeli government had a budget and that this budgeting was for the military government to allocate to the mosques that the Islamic movement was building and thus that the Islamic movement and subsequently Hamas were strengthened and indirectly supported by the occupation. These are part and parcel of a broader framing that we find from the more center or what's in Israeli society is the labor aligned or they would call it left of Israeli society. Those opposed to the Likud to today Netanyahu and also for some decades, poised contra Netanyahu and the Liquid Project to use this claim as something of an instrument with which to underscore that there has been too much leniency towards Hamas and the Islamic movement, and were those who occupied the labor slash center left parties to ascend to power, they would not have allowed for this burgeoning of the Islamic movement or Hamas funds, even via Qatar, to have been allocated. This is insofar as it's proffered by intelligence-aligned Shabak slash Shin Bet-aligned figures, also part and parcel of a broader strategy of conceptually foreclosing the possibility of Palestinian resistances being an indigenous project. it produces the idea that even those formations that are against the occupation in a militarized fashion are pawns within the omniscient and omnipotent occupation stratagem. So I believe that these related the anti Netanyahu wing of the what one might call the liberal Zionist camps framing of the narrative as a cudgel as a political cudgel and also the more intelligence agency aligned framing of an omniscient and omnipotent Shabak

Adnan Husain: Yes. Okay. Well, so, I mean, in that context, then it seems valuable to rehearse at least some components and people should go read the article to get, you know, further details on all of your historical analysis and also the, you know, step-by-step and very careful demonstration of how the myth was created in various newspaper articles, scholarship and allegations that then were used and deployed in quotations by other people as a kind of known fact. But perhaps it would be worth talking about where this association begins and what the kind of real truth of the early development of Hamas out of the Islamic Brotherhood in a regional context in the 1970s. What was happening in terms of Islamic movements in the region and the relationship of the Palestinian branch of the Islamic Brotherhood and their early development in relationship to the occupation?

Mujamma Haraket: Certainly. And I do think that here, although not until 1992, 1993, when some 415 Hamas-aligned or Palestinian Islamic Jihad-aligned figures, political, military and otherwise, are expelled from Gaza to Marj al-Zuhur, southern Lebanon, when the first contacts with IRGC members particularly Hajj Ramadan and Hizbullah members transpires, this being the first real physical dovetailing or engagement in an intimate setting that then lays the landscape for political alignments, there is nevertheless an ideological force to the 1979 revolution in Iran. And this is, of course, a galvanizing moment for what will become Palestinian Islamic Shahad and a politicization for the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood of Palestine. Now, this is not to claim that it was not a political formation. As many know, during the Nakba, particularly in 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood did play an important role in the fighting. particularly the Jaffa branch of the Palestinian Brotherhood was one of the most active in terms of fighting and there existed within that branch a secret military organization which enlisted a number of fighters who had qualifications. So the Ikhwan in the region, Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestine region, assumed responsibility for the defense of Basa, for Tal al-Rij, for Ajami and the Muzakh areas in Jaffa. and for maintaining law and order within the city. They had obtained, by the way, arms that were more significant than many of the neighboring countries' militaries. by way of what were called the sacred jihad battalions with whom they joined in fighting in the area in and around al-Quds had gained legitimacy. There is a very interesting history that one can get into in terms of the brethren in the Gaza Strip. and the fighting during the 1948 period. Because before 1948, there were no independent national Muslim Brotherhood organizations in Palestine.

Adnan Husain: There was only an administrative office, which was linked to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Mujamma Haraket: But there is also, it should be noted, another significant militarization in 1969, in particular, in august 1969 what is known as the green belt operation which was a collaborative effort between the equine the palestinian muslim brotherhood and fata and there was a very notable uh september 1969 der yassin operation And these resistance efforts were led by the Muslim Brotherhood of Jordan in collaboration with Fatah. It's also here, I think, worth noting that many who come from the first generation of Fatah were themselves members of the Muslim Brotherhood of Palestine. In fact, there's even some witness accounts where Arafat himself says that he was aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, but Abu Jihad, other very important fighters and formative figures came from these early Muslim Brotherhood formations, Palestine Muslim Brotherhood, which it should be noted that not every, and this is something I underscore often, not every Muslim Brotherhood formation shares the same history, the same textual and theological formative texts, of course, albana, kutub, a few others are shared across the board as figures whom all inaugural members read, and there are certain usra formations and the like, reading group formations and the like, that across the board you will find in any Muslim Brotherhood formation. But in terms of their intellectual and political history, there are significant distinctions between what is the Muslim Brotherhood in the Levant, which in 1978 the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood merged with the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan to form, then once it gains its autonomy, as it later does in the odds, the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, so these should not be conflated with other Muslim Brotherhoods. In any case, to return to your question about the 1970s in particular, after these Green Belt operations into the 1970s, there is institution building, which really does begin to version and in the mid early to mid 1970s so in 1973 you have the formation of the islamic center Mujammar al-Islami, which is founded in Gaza by Sheikh Yassin and a number of followers who would later become prominent members within Hamas. And these include Mahmoud al-Zahar, who is now an older Hamas figure, but in many ways, ideologically occupies the same pole as Yahya al-Sinwar and others who were very much a part of the Axis of Resistance project, believed in this kind of transnational resistance project and allegiances, while of course having nationalist sympathies, but there was a balance between what was seen as required for the liberation of Palestine, which was a broader liberatory project. But others too, Abdelaziz Rantisi, Ibrahim Yazouri, Abd al-Fattah al-Dukhan, who wrote what is called the Hamas Charter often, Isa al-Najjar, Salah al-Shahadeh, who formed some of the first cells, first resistant cells, well before the formation of Hamas, and a few other lesser known figures. And these founders had recently graduated from universities, some from Egyptian schools, and they were broadly from lower middle classes, but very highly educated. Yassine and Yazouri, who was a pharmacist, they were sort of the two leading figures. And then as we continue into the mid-1970s, We see more institutions transpire. In 1976, Al-Jami'ah al-Islamiyah, which is the Islamic association it's created, it oversees social, medical, and educational programming. It's founded by a scholar named Ahmad Bahar. and he was a former imam at the Palestine Mosque in central Gaza, and Abu Shamab, who was a civil engineer. I think it's important here to also underscore that the mosques become political sites. During the mosque building phase, there are also clandestine locations where the occupation, which since 1967, of course, has a physical presence, a governor-like presence in Gaza, is not able to, with its watchful eye, decree that or sanction that which is discussed and that which is censured. So these become political sites where preaching and resistance are intertwined. This is also, by the way, incidentally, why those figures of the liberal Zionist camp will often underscore that in allowing mosque building to transpire, those who were aligned with Likud or those who had been too permissive in their occupation had allowed for the Hamas movement vis-a-vis the Islamic movement to grow. Now, this also is not quite true because there was, if one reviews the history, quite a bit of effort that was undertaken to hinder and obstruct the erection of mosques during this phase. In fact, there was a mosque with a library that four or five times was bulldozed by the occupation to prevent the establishment because the occupation caught word of these being political sites. But these are just two examples of institutions, of important institutions. that were established in Palestine during the mid, early to mid 1970s the other one and perhaps if you if you like we can go into this with a bit more detail because it's enormously important but there was not space for it in the article is the creation of the islamic university of gaza which is an enormously important political site and also incidentally where the first claims of the islamic movement being collaborators are born

Adnan Husain: Yeah, I think that would be useful because that is a very important institution. So how does the development of the Islamic University in Gaza and also the factional student politics that takes place in Palestinian campuses, but particularly in this one, contribute to both the emergence and development of the distinctive political path of Hamas and the charges that are developed about it being somehow affiliated or associated with the occupation made by Fatah political activists in that environment. I think that would be a very useful history to cover.

Mujamma Haraket: Wonderful. So if you don't mind, we can get a bit granular with it. But it is just here worth noting that before the university is created, in November 1978, there's this debate that takes place between the PLO factions about whether a university should be created, and if it should be created, what should the character of that university be. While there's this debate about even the viability of opening a university in Gaza, the Islamic movement takes the initiative to do it. And they open the Islamic University of Gaza with the approval of Arafat and the help of some Arab funds channeled largely, it should be noted, through Fatah. In fact, Yazid Saig, one of the great living scholars of the, I don't want to say of just the PLO, because he has an excellent book on Hamas's policing in the odds. He's an excellent scholar of Palestinian history in general. He claims that Abu Jihad secured the funds. as well as the academic accreditation for the university from Al-Azhar in Cairo, which IUG, the Islamic University of Gaza, was something of a brother institution of. And Said Bakr, who was the vice president of the Islamic University of Gaza's board at the time, claims that Arafat cleared the funds himself after meeting with Bakr, whom Arafat knew from the student days in Cairo, and he met with Bakr and a few other board members so as to allocate these funds, demonstrating that although I said the Islamic University of Gaza was created by the Islamic movement, it was not an autonomous project exclusive to the Islamic movement, It was initiated by some of the wealthier figures like Khairi al-Agha, who was living in Saudi Arabia at the time. He's a Palestinian who had, through his businesses, acquired significant wealth and was able to fund the erection of the university, but, of course, working through some excellent PLO channels. And so the university is built There's a few matters that are important to underscore in terms of factionalization, however. So in June 1983, there is a clash between what is known as the Islamic Bloc. It is a group that is formed of Islamic movement students and pro-PLO students. which ended in a clash between Riyad Agha's pro-PLO supporters and Mohammad Saker's Islamic Movement supporters. One of the Qutla leaders, Qutla being the Islamic bloc, argued that this clash was due to a A strike that had been planned, not undertaken, there would be a strike-related clash not long after, but that this incident had to do with some buses that were coming from the West Bank of Propelo students. Al-Aga, not by the way Khairi Al-Aga, who was aligned with the Islamic movement, but a different Al-Aga named Riyad Al-Aga, who was aligned with the PLO. He had been dismissed from the university, so this had resulted in a brawl. So there's another broad that's worth mentioning from May 1983, and this one's a bit more significant. This one was between the Islamic Bloc and pro-PLO students at the at IUG. So again, we have 300-some students who are Boston from the West Bank. And the PLO's newspaper of record, Al-Fajr, it blames the Islamic movement for this brawl. And it here claims that it's a collaborating force. This is the first known instance that I have found in my archival research of the collaborator claim. Now, it is made publicly two years later, and I think in a more influential manner, in a courtyard debate between Yahya al-Sinwar and Mohamed Dalan at a courtyard of Islamic University of Gaza. It was quite interesting, actually. There were these debate clubs that both the Islamic Bloc and Fatah formed and they would go to the courtyard and debate with one another, Sinwar often representing the Islamic bloc and Dalan representing the Fatah bloc. And this is where Dalan first, in a public manner, produces the collaborator claim. However, the first time that I have found that it was produced at all was in this written notice by al-Fajr. And so the conflict, it became representative of the nationalist, first so-called Islamist formations. And if one wants to go into the true details about why this transpired, one sees that the record is mixed. The Jabha Lal Amal al-Tulabiya PFLP student wing leader, Adli Yazouri, he claimed that the PLO supporters were those who instigated this violent clash, whereas others claimed that it was the Islamic movement. But the context behind why it transpired has to do with the person who then had been appointed as president. In 1983, the board of the university and Arafat decide to appoint Mohammed Sakr, as I noted, a Muslim brother from Jordan who had a Harvard doctorate as president. The reason being the outgoing president had been acting president only and he had not been deemed sufficiently qualified. At the time it was rare to have sufficiently qualified academics within Gaza because there were not yet universities. And according to the dean Abu Siba, this had led to the importing of 32 lecturers with doctorates from Jordan, which had given rise to a pay differential between local and foreign lecturers, which triggered the strike. It should be noted the first dean of Sharia only had a bachelor's degree before this, and in the first year of the Islamic University of Gaza's existence there was only one lecturer with a doctorate, whereas five had masters and six only had bachelors. This is according to the statistical bulletin for the West Bank and Gaza produced in 1983. In order to get more accredited scholars into the Islamic University of Gaza, those who were associated oftentimes with the Muslim Brotherhood from Jordan were brought in. Now, why were those who were in the islamic uh movement well in the muslim brotherhood in particular brought in because it was seen that there was a higher education particularly in terms of uh jurisprudence and other fields that the islamic uh that the muslim brotherhood espoused uh so given the emphasis of the committee in Jordan and what turned out to be then the board of the university, a number of students who were associated with the PLO camp saw this as an Islamic movement takeover. And this galvanized precipitated a strike so the reason that the strike transpires on paper is because of a paid differential but really it's more representative of these uh what the plo associated students see as a takeover of the university so uh Abu Ali, who was at the time the Dean of Student Affairs, He describes in a witness account how he had devoted a great deal of effort to trying to mediate between the rival factions at the time, because he says he believes that the circulation of provocative leaflets claiming that one group was a collaborator or the other group was a collaborator had itself been produced by collaborators. According to Abu Ali, The occupation was, quote, playing on contradictions between the two parties. A small group of agents had published a leaflet on this and that, and then another leaflet would be produced in response. And it's often the case, he says, that those who were claimed to be the authors of the leaflets would say, we didn't sign this. We didn't author this. This would happen on many accounts. And apparently during this clash, which became a bit violent, there were occupation soldiers. It's post-1967, but pre-2005. The occupation soldiers positioned themselves around the Islamic University of Gaza and reportedly forced students who were attempting to flee this armed clash back into the confrontation. In fact, some interviewees insisted that while they had seen senior members of the Israeli administration in Gaza hand out weapons to those who are trying to flee and pushing them to go back in. So whether or not these accounts are correct, what we know is that the occupation army was indeed present and it did not try to stop the fighting. Abu Ali, the aforementioned din, he refers to Muhammad Dalan of the interior office then as one of these figures who was armed and pushed back in. This is the first instance I know of in which Dalan is characterized as a would-be collaborator. So I'll end this account here, but it's a telling account, I think.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, well, I think, you know, maybe just to draw out some of the conclusions or patterns that we might see that are relevant for this future set of associations and charges and collaboration is that clearly, you know, with the establishment of the Islamic University in Gaza, it's an important developing educational institution as part of the Palestinian, you know, kind of broad social, cultural, political, you know, scene. And so there are different kind of views on how, you know, the character of it and, how it should be understood, managed, and so on, and that those kind of end up leading to some kind of differentiation and conflict between more PLO Fatah-oriented students and professors and those who are more aligned with the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. But I'm wondering also if there's any ideological, you know, these debates, quite interesting debates quite apart from the strikes and clashes around control over the character of the institution, the fact that they also had these debates, what was the character, broadly speaking, you would say, between the different political and religious positions as they resolve themselves? What are these debates really about in terms of content, in framing national versus Islamic content? Is that actually the best way to characterize the difference in these positions?

Mujamma Haraket: Right. I don't think it is. The reason being because we have amongst the so-called Islamic movement myriad nationalist tendencies. And we also have within Fatah myriad Islamic tendencies. There are a number of poles that exist from this period, late 1970s and early 1980s. And shortly after the Islamic University of Gaza is created, a very important polling is undertaken. About 400 students are polled, and of those who state that they nationally support Fatah, 53%, when questioned, note that they hope to see an Islamic state in Palestine. 28% approximately say they would like a mixed Islamic secular state, which indicated that Islam should have some role in the state structure, according to a great majority of the Fatah bloc. Of the 14 students who, and admittedly this is shorter, a smaller population sample, but of the 14 students who were associated with the PFLP and polled, over half of them had said that they hope to see an Islamic State in Palestine, and approximately 10% said they want to see a mixed state. And these are Marxist-Leninists. So it's demonstrative of even how within the Marxist-Leninist or nationalist factions there is a strong Islamic tendency in terms of socio-political structurization. So if one were to characterize these two parties and political formations as nationalist on the one hand and Marxist-Leninist on the other, they would be correct to some degree, but they would also be overlooking an important facet of the population's belief.

Adnan Husain: That's fascinating. And I mean, I think at some point, hopefully we can have a whole maybe discussion about the relationship between PFLP, Marxist-Leninists and others with the Islamic resistance. I mean, that's just absolutely fascinating to see that these categories and divisions and institutional identities mask in some ways a deeper underlying unity. In fact, what one might suggest from the histories that you're telling us and the very fascinating and deeply insightful information um that you're you know revealing here or presenting here is that perhaps what ends up happening is much more of a division between those orientations that are willing to try and negotiate a settlement on some reduced terms with the occupation as the kind of developments start taking place over the course of the 80s and culminating with the Oslo peace process after the Madrid rounds and so on, and the crystallization of resistance faction across leftist and Islamic movements that reject surrender, you know, surrendering kind of, you know, the resistance demands or abandoning the you know refugee question and so forth that that starts to crystallize and be much more a meaningful uh division and you discuss this to some extent in the article that one of the ways in which this charge of Hamas being a creation of Israel or supported by Israel that first starts, as you pointed out, in that 1983 al-Fajr kind of, you know, allegation based on these, you know, factional disputes taking place at the Islamic University of Gaza, and then later in a public forum by mohammed dahlan that there's a kind of continuity between that and the you know plo official kind of statements by arafat about um hamas being supported by israel as a result of them not being willing to join either the palestinian national council at the invitation of arafat or to join you know in you know, the PLO umbrella organization, and that instead a kind of crystallizing of resistance to those other formations that start involving themselves in negotiations with Israel. Perhaps you could kind of elaborate a little bit more on, you know, how the charge of Hamas's collaboration fits within that political environment of what's changing in the late 80s, with the rise of the Intifada and then the beginning of negotiations that lead to the Oslo process.

Mujamma Haraket: Indeed. So to skip ahead then to the first Intifada and when the fractures which you adumbrated first come to public light in about November 1988, the Palestinian National Council which is the legislative wing of the PLO. It formally accepts a two-state solution based on the 1947 Partition Plan and UN Security 242 and 338, which declares in effect that it accepts a state in the West Bank and Gaza. Immediately following the PNC declaration, Arafat publicly renounces what he calls terrorism, He formally accepts these UN decisions and recognizes the state of Israel. And that means that the U.S. government's preconditions for meeting with the PLO, which previously it had banned, who had been acquiesced, ascended to. So this had wide support at the time, it should be noted, because many did believe, many denizens of the Palestinian population, they did believe that this would lead to a Palestinian state. But after the PNC decision, Hamas rejected the compromise and it argued that all of Palestine is waqf, it's an endowment by God. Nobody has the right to acquiesce any portion of it. It's not something a singular figure or even political formation has a right to do. This is, by the way, still the thoroughgoing belief in Hamas. However, there's political compromises, of course, extended hodnas that the movement has been open to since the days of Sheikh Yassin. And this has long been the policy. But so... this is a site of fracturing. And this fracturing is only exacerbated after, as you noted, the Madrid conference. So the Madrid conference is highly significant, not only because of what happens in Madrid itself, but also because of a concomitant parallel conference that is had in Iran. So tensions between the PLO and Hamas have already started transpiring well before 1991. It's October 30th until the 1st of November of 1991 that the Madrid conference is held, in which the PLO is not actually able to represent themselves. They have to go with the Jordanian delegation, in which the Jordanian delegation is technically representing them. PLO figures form a unified delegation of sorts. This is the beginnings of the so-called peace process, which our mutual friend Benjy has a nice term for. I think he called it not an acquiescence process, but some synonym for acquiescence, a capitulation process, is what he calls it now.

Adnan Husain: It would be even better in Arabic, you know, I mean, I think it's really the, you know, the operative one, right? So the peace process versus the surrender or capitulation process. I mean, in Arabic, it's even using the same root.

Mujamma Haraket: I think, in fact, there is one writing by Rantisi which draws on this. So in any case, in July 1990, the PLO's official organ at that time, Filastin Atara, it instigates a really revengeful campaign where they accuse Hamas of deserting the unity of nationalist ranks. And the statements produced by the PLO, they focus on this idea that And this is where it's first really born and as strictly worded a sense is this. And they say Hamas had been established to satisfy an Israeli aim. This is on paper that which the reconstructed or translated statement that the PLO produced states. Before there were collaborator charges, but now it is even more formalized in some sense. And also what's appended to the statement is that it had been established to satisfy an Israeli aim in order to weaken the PLO. And this is where that charge that it was a counterweight of sorts has its roots. So this statement is, of course, met with not only by Hamas, but also by a number of Palestinian parties, including Islamic movement, nationalist and leftist organizations that coalesced into a unified front following the Madrid conference. And during this Iran organized conference in support of intifada which was held in Tehran in the end of October I believe it was actually a few days before about a week before the Madrid conference but it was an anticipation of the Madrid conference and in opposition in protest of the Madrid conference so it was held in Tehran and it shaped a unified block that is known as the 10 Resistance Organizations, or the TRO, consisting of, as the name suggests, 10 Palestinian factions who are opposed to the Madrid and then Oslo process. And this included Hamas, PFLP, DFLP, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Vanguard for the Popular Liberation War, Lightning Forces, Al-Sa'iq, Sa'ika, they're not, some of these are like Fatah al-Intifada and the Abu Nidal Ashkar wing aren't as well known, I think, but nevertheless. at that time commanded enough of a following that this was seen as possibly threatening the PLO. And this was really what prompted the PLO to produce a statement that Hamas had been created as a counterweight to the PLO, because this formation did seem to have enough support from non-Islamic movement, that means non-Hamas and non-PIJ supporters, that it could be endowed with significant legitimacy and result in a political structure, a competitor political structure to the PLO.

Adnan Husain: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So very valuable to detail that history that it partly comes out of response to the peace process and rejecting it, that these charges are made, you know, an intra-Palestinian response. um you know picking up on the israeli you know kind of critique of uh likud you know the court of liberal zionists and that same uh set of associations or charges then also being picked up for intra-palestinian uh political differences over relationship to the occupation and the peace process so quite interesting to have that. I guess maybe my other kind of thought here is that very often there is a kind of amalgamation of Islamic resistance movements. all together in one. Whereas with your careful study and knowledge of the different groups and the positions that they've taken over history and their relationship to the occupation, not only are you able to dispel this myth that Israel was somehow involved in creating or supporting, you know, Hamas, but also perhaps you have some interest, and I know you've published a number of things about some of the, you know, let's call them Salafist jihadists. I think you would make the point that that isn't the best term for it, but some of the kind of other groups and organizations that have aligned themselves with some of the militias or gangs that have actually fought Hamas and opposed Hamas and in some ways been working with Israeli support. The reason why this is politically important to distinguish and analyze is because in the post-October 7th Israeli propaganda, of which this reviving of the idea that Israel supported Hamas is one component of, but there was also the association of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas with being essentially equivalent to ISIS or Al-Qaeda kinds of phenomenon, and that this was also part of the wider atrocity propaganda in which they tried to make these associations. between alleged brutalities, including sexual assault cases as part of this atrocity propaganda to try and characterize and portray the Islamic resistance in Palestine as somehow equivalent to ISIS and Al-Qaeda. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts, given your work on this, on sort of dispelling that association as well and uncovering what the real relationship between some of these Takfiri groups and the Israeli occupation are.

Mujamma Haraket: Yes, and I will note that for those who are interested in a more comprehensive review of this history, I would recommend Yazid Saig's We Serve the People. And this was a... longer paper, actually, not a book, but it was subsequently published as a book by Brandeis University in 2011. Its full title is We Serve the People, Hamas Policing in Gaza. And there is another book by Bjorn Brenner, which is Gaza under Hamas from Islamic democracy to Islamist governance. The second book, I will say it gets a few factual things wrong, but it's nevertheless worth reading because Brenner, who's an envoy to or was an envoy to Syria, also conducted a number of important interviews. We're in Gaza, and thus one is able to glean some aspects of the development of what he calls and admittedly was something of a political specialist term more than a theological one. Salafi jihadists in Gaza. We can then, I think, use this term while understanding that what Salafism really is, is distinct from what this political appellation, this term of art, picks out. which is a political phenomenon. And I make this distinction because there is this Abu Ubaidah quote, we are the real Salafis. There is also Mahmoud al-Zahar, who makes a similar claim in a paper that I think is quite well worth reading, despite the international crisis group. And that paper is called Radical Islam in Gaza. It's about these Salafi jihadi groups. It was produced in 2011, which was the period in which they were gaining more traction. And there, there's an interview with Mahmoud al-Zahar, who was a Hamas political leader at the time. He still is, but unfortunately, he has Alzheimer's and thus he's not able to partake in the political process. I say this because he really was one of the bastion leaders of the Axis of Resistance Front in opposition to some interface. debates, particularly those with the more pragmatist Khalid Meshal school. He is in stark opposition to their courting or attempts to court favor from some of the Gulf states. He was much more principled. But in any case, they both produced Abu Ubaidah and Mahmoud al-Zahar claims that we are the real Salafis. And when asked what this means, or when expounding on what this means, they had noted that they are the true followers of Islam in its genuine form and that they nevertheless There's this funny comment that Mahmoud Zahar says that our Prophet did not use a ship or an aircraft or a car or a telephone. If you say that because he did not use these things, it is forbidden to do so today, that is not true Salafism. For example, these people, referring here to the Salafi jihadi formations, these small pockets that have transpired in Gaza, for example, these people believe that the battle prescribes riding a horse. So they gathered people together and on horses they went to face Israeli tanks. But what would happen then? If our prophet had tanks, he would have used them. And this is demonstrative of what Azahar and Abu Ubaidah too, who makes this remark after Azahar has done so and thus in the context of this, should be understood as saying, which is that Salafism as they're conceiving of it is not the kind of quiet Islam in which we have to imitate in our dress, in our weapons, etc. Those that were undertaken by the Prophet, peace be upon him, as companions, but rather genuine Islam, so. With this distinction at hand, we can review the history of how these formations begin to populate Gaza, particularly after the summer of 2007. I don't like to use the term coup because really the Palestinian Authority was attempting to undertake a coup once Hamas was democratically elected, but when Hamas comes to govern Gaza. And in the subsequent years, following the summer of 2007, but really the period between 2007 and 2010, there are what is in the scholarship called Jaljalat, but Jaljalat itself wasn't really a group. It's more of this umbrella term that's used to describe several different groups in Gaza that formed. So these groups include Jund Ansarallah, God's supporters, Suyuf al-Haqq, Swords of the Truth, Suyuf al-Islam, Swords of Islam, Palestinian Hezbollah, which should be noted as unrelated to the Hezbollah of Lebanon and also unrelated to another group that was also called Palestinian Hezbollah, which was related to Palestinian Islam Jihad. the Hezbollah of southern Lebanon, a short-lived group. Both of these were short-lived, it should be noted. And a few other groups like Jaish al-Ummah, soldiers of the Arab nation, and Daesh Ghazeh, the Islamic state of Ghazeh. These began forming in this 2007-2010 period with Some, it should be noted, youngsters who had, with the emergence of the social media chat rooms, some of them Saudi-funded, been propagating a version of Wahhabist, quietist Islamism. And although it never gained as much of a foothold in Gaza, it did attract some younger members who, after Hamas became the governing party of Gaza, were worried that no longer did the mantle of resistance belong to Hamas, that Hamas now had become like Fatah before it, a politically pragmatic party that was trying to prevent the resistance against the occupation, lest it result in the dissolution of infrastructure and the gains that had been made internally, etc. So when this happens, one of the most notable clashes is in 2009, where al-Qassam fighters clash with a group of, let's call them Salafi jihadists, who had stormed the Ibn Taymiyyah Mosque in Rafah. And this which happened in August 2009, took place after Jund al-Sarallah, one of the aforementioned groups, declared an Islamic emirate in the southern city of Rafah. And Jund al-Sarallah had been founded by a preacher, Abd al-Latif Musa, and a Syrian born a Palestinian, Khaled Banat, who claimed to have foreign fighting experience. Their leader, Musa, he was a well-known imam of a local mosque, and its military leader was a former al-Qaeda operative who accused Hamas of apostasy. and for failing to establish a full Islamic government in Gaza. So it should be noted here, one of the grievances that are played on is that despite being a governing faction, Hamas has not enacted a full Islamic governance. Things like wearing a headscarf are not imposed. Hamas's hope is that people will wear it, but that this will also... And there's some laws as to, for instance, within courtrooms, one has to wear a headscarf, though this is eventually actually repealed after some local lawyers take issue with it. Hamas is very much during this period perceptive of the demands of the local populace, and their hope has always been that Sharia will organically develop. And their version of Sharia, it should be noted, has its roots in what's known as the al-Banna school. of Ikhwan, which is very much a different school. One actually, in some sense, closer to that which Khomeini and others had written about in their seminal texts. But so, Musayyid proclaims this Emirate and Hamas's executive forces, which was a security force that was formed, during the fighting with the Palestinian Authority. It's forced into this combat with 22 Jund Ansarallah followers. There are a number who are killed. Five policemen are killed. These clashes result in 150 members being injured. And it develops then into something of an enmity that lasts for subsequent years, not only with Junt Ansar Allah members, but others as well, because Salafism with some figures like Mohammed Talib and Khalid Banat in its Saudi supported form, did gain some popularity with the younger Qassam members. And in response to this, Hamas It began to undertake more dawah projects, more educational projects, insofar as there were violent clashes that resulted in blood disputes. It created legal frameworks for resolving these disputes. And over the subsequent years, it did develop ways to... contained the Madkari Wahhabist tendency that had developed into a kind of quietism that took issue with both the form of governance that Hamas was undertaking, but also the this kind of violent imposition of Emirates that Hamas was able to effectively contain without having to resort to continual violence. I also would want to note that financial inducements had been used as an effective instrument in some sense, where there were Hamas councils that offered to repair, renovate mosques, and in doing so were able to, in a benign sense, introduce a messaging and agenda that was more erudite, more scholars would come to these mosques and preach why there were some inaccuracies in the form of Islam that was being preached within the Salafi-Jahabi context.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, and I guess maybe I'm wondering if you would draw any connections between those developments that were taking place in the mid-late 2000s and subsequent roles that we've seen emerge in the context of the Gaza genocide of affiliations between some of these gangs and black market groups groups that were stealing aid and their kind of political affiliations with maybe these Salafist jihadist type groups or organizations also based in the Sinai and so forth. I mean, it seems to me, I guess my point here is that those groups that you've identified and distinguished as, you know, counters to or critics of, you know, Hamas during its governance phase in Gaza that emerge tended to be politically quietest and privileging differences over Islamic practice and doctrine, but not prioritizing resistance and defense against the Israeli occupation on the one hand, but then secondly, also sometimes violently actually fighting inside, you know, Palestine to carve out these like Islamic Emirates and so forth. And whether there's any connection between that kind of effort and a later pattern that we see of undermining resistance during the genocide, you know, kind of phase, the phase of active resistance against the genocide.

Mujamma Haraket: Indeed, one of the most important such figures who serves as a connective tissue between this period, this aforementioned period, post-2007 and today, is a figure by the name of Ghazan al-Duhini. Al-Duhini, he was a member of Jaish al-Islam, one of these groups. And he is the figure that now leads the Abu Shabab gang after Abu Shabab was eliminated. So Jaish al-Islam had, alongside Jundan Sarallah, been the largest of these anti-Hamas sectarian Takfiri groups, these Madkhali groups. I think really, if we want to get the ideology correct, it's Madkhalism, it's not Salafism, it's not even necessarily Wahhabism, it was Madkhalism. argues that the state's representative is the true voice of Islam and that politically there should be no independent or autonomous project from the state. In any case, It should also be noted that Jaysh al-Islam had participated in the Gilad Shalit abduction, in the kidnapping, in the operation that Muhammad al-Sinwar had spearheaded in June 2006, but it was a different Jaysh al-Islam at the time. In the wake of the operation and in the subsequent years, a clan, the Duhmush clan, had gained significant traction within this formation and certain figures within it had pushed it to increasingly sectarian and anti-Hamas ethos. So it's... There's this figure, Jaishal Islam, or Dahini, who belonged to this group, who was imprisoned. And although he... was in prison before Tufan al-Aqsa, before the operation itself was undertaken. Very shortly thereafter, he is freed from the prison when the prison that he's in, the outside of it, is bombed. He's not the only figure, of course, that was imprisoned. There were numerous Salafi jihadi figures whom Hamas had imprisoned, In some cases, they had been sentenced to life in prison or they had been sentenced even to death, but never had these death sentences been undertaken. This is why so many of these figures, like Dahini, were living at the time. Dahini, it should also be noted that he has been one of the figures that has drawn on particular clerics like Othman al-Khamis, who's a Kuwaiti scholar, a very sectarian one. he and before his demise Abu Shabab would cite this scholar to justify their collaboration with the occupation in March 2025 this Kuwaiti scholar al-Khamis had asserted that Hamas is a deviant political faction it's a partisan group that has cast itself into Iran's embrace and this this close relationship with Iran is the reason that many of these groups would cite in order to justify their collaborationism. There is, by the way, I often cite this paper. It's a very good paper. It's called Collaborator Militias in Gaza Strip and the Role in Israel's Use of Rogue Actors. It was authored quite recently in February, 2026 by a researcher named Ibrahim Abdul Karim. And it was published by the Zaytuna Center for Studies and Consultation in Beirut. And it goes into the history of collaborator groups beginning with the Nakba. But I recommend this because it's up to that point gives a, comprehensive history, it should also, I think, be noted that in the case of the so-called counter-terrorism strike force, which is led by Hussam al-Astal, we find not only a linkage with some of these Mad Khali groups, but also with the Palestinian Authority, which alongside the United Arab Emirates has lent financial and military support to some of these collaborator gangs. And if you like, I can go into a bit more detail about this figure, Hussam al-Afdal, and what his connection to the Palestinian Authority is.

Adnan Husain: sure that could be uh you know quite helpful and substantiated but i also want um if possible perhaps to characterize and situate it contextually you know how um what mechanisms they're collaborating with the Israeli. Because this is in some ways the reverse of the charge that the myth that you debunked in this article and that we've been discussing about Israel's support for Hamas. When in fact, actually, there is a sort of policy of supporting certain Islamist or Islamic oriented groups, but to much different effect. And in fact, those oppose Hamas. So it's important to emphasize that. But the second component and something that goes back in the history as a thread that you've mentioned that I just wanted to bring out a little bit. is that Tehran conference that you talked about before in the late 1980s, and the subsequent charge that Arafat made about how Hamas is sponsored and supported by Iran, and that this is a kind of continuing thread of undermining the indigenous nationalist Islamic resistance, you know, in Palestine is to try and associate it either by these extreme Salafists or Wahhabi or Madhalis, you know, as you're putting it, you know, these followers of, you know, I forget what his name is, Al-Madhali, Ruba Al-Madhali, I forget the name of the Saudi scholar who is associated with this kind of doctrine of having to support, you know, whatever your political authority. Yes, Rabi. Rabi al-Madkhali. That there is a kind of like symmetry in the, you know, Palestinian Authority, PLO and then Palestinian Authority claims about Hamas and these Madkhali kind of, you know, groups. trying to de-indigenize in some sense or associate them with Iran. And in the present context, that seems important given that we're recording this in the midst of the Ramadan war and it's day 57. So this is kind of interesting because it also shows the way in which Iran has been supportive of resistance, you know, including, you know, supporting Palestinian resistance groups and movements. And so this kind of ideology can be manufactured in some sense to characterize it as somehow associated with the Shia or not indigenous and is really a product of some you know, kind of Iranian interference that both the Palestinian Authority, the sort of secular nationalist, you know, shares as charges and also these Madhali, you know, factions and groups.

Mujamma Haraket: Indeed. So to answer your question of how the support is granted, initially it was under the auspices of, well, of, newly erect buildings, facilities and communities east of the Yellow Line and in southern Rafah, where if these groups were allowed to be contained, undertake certain operations, then all of the luxuries from which the rest of Gaza during the genocide and during the so-called ceasefire have been deprived from would be allotted. And this was what these collaborator groups drew on in their marketing. Since then, the demand that has been made by the Shabak, by the Shin Bet, which of course handles the portfolio, the file for the occupied territories, has demanded increasingly more of the collaborator groups in terms of gathering intelligence. But we see now increasingly over the last few weeks, in fact, operations in which al-Astal, who has been nicknamed Abu Sabin, seven as in the number seven, which comes from seven up, the soda drink, because he has these, uh, videos where he poses, uh, with the sodas and with these foods. And so the local community has called them up with seven, because this is his marketing and stuff is all we get these American products. We have these luxuries like sodas that the rest of Gaza doesn't have. Uh, And so there have been some memes and jokes that the local community has made about him. They are broadly despised, of course, these figures, despite flaunting these luxuries, but they have also been undertaking increasingly operations. east of the Yellow Line, where they will distribute cigarettes and coffee and chocolates to youngsters with the hope of ingratiating themselves. But in so doing, simultaneously, they have been using these civilians as human shields as they gather intelligence equipment. There have been several times, in fact, and the term human shields was used by Radha and Al Hares, which are two security factions associated with the resistance, because they have been collecting counterintelligence where they see that during this distribution of cigarettes and candy to the local population, they are simultaneously not only scouting for locations of resistance fighters, but kidnapping some civilians. shooting at suspected resistance fighters, all while in the presence of civilians knowing that the resistance is not going to retaliate lest it injure one of the Palestinian civilians. This is a tactic that we have seen over the last two weeks, and in one particular instance this last week, Almost 25 figures, civilians, were kidnapped by one of these collaborator formations linked to Husam al-Astao, who is the figure that I would say is receiving the most support during this period from the occupation. His militia was established in 2024 in the Khan Yunus area. Hussam al-Asta, who's 50, I think 51 now, he was a former officer in the Palestinian Authority's Preventive Security Service under Mohammed Dallan. So Dallan is a re-emerging figure in this history that we see. Al-Asta, he had actually before this been imprisoned on charges of collaboration with the occupation, and he had fled Gaza. following Hamas and the resistance's assumption of governance in 2007. He subsequently served in the Palestinian Authority's security forces abroad, and with the assistance of the Mossad, he participated in the assassination of an engineer that was associated with Hamas living in Malaysia in 2018. So in 2022, Hamas, which has some connections to figures in Malaysia, particularly, this is perhaps a subject for a different day, but there are hacker groups, computer engineers and the like, who in Malaysia, some in Turkey and the like, are associated with cells that though not formally part of Hamas, have helped Hamas in intelligence undertakings. And there were some such figures in Malaysia. And the engineer Fadi Al-Bash was assassinated by Al-Astal and those whom he was working with vis-a-vis the Mossad in 2018. But because of this network that Hamas had an alliance with or had the connection with, they were able to gather significance. intelligence and orchestrate al-Asta's return to the Gaza Strip, where he was imprisoned and sentenced to death. But as was the case often, And this is despite how Hamas has been portrayed by the Western and Zionist media. They would not really undertake the death sentences that often. They preferred the life sentencing in prison. But this also therefore allowed, once the Zionist entity undertook its airstrike on the prison at the outset of the war, it facilitated al-Asta's escape. He has stated at the height of the group's formation in approximately mid-September that he had 150 or so people. who were part of his collaborator militia, and he had always underscored that he sees his group, the so-called Counterterrorism Strike Force, as a successor group to Hamas, an alternative, and that they want to live in peace with the occupation. They also, as you noted, were documented stealing food, water, and aid supplies, which in and of itself produce significant enmity. And lastly, it should perhaps be noted that he himself noted that he confirmed that he coordinates with the aforementioned Hassan al-Dahini in Rafah in an interview with the Occupations Channel 12 network.

Adnan Husain: That's very important, these histories. And right up to the last couple of weeks, I mean, we have to really thank you so much for your forensic erudition in documenting, analyzing, and studying these histories that are so often untold and help us unravel quite a number of the kind of false narratives, myths, propaganda associations that are made to kind of confuse the character of the Islamic resistance of Palestine in various ways. So this has been absolutely uh extraordinarily beneficial i think and um i want to thank you so much majamma for the generosity with your time for uh spending um an hour and a half uh detailing and discussing these topics and also for your continuing work um in translation and in historical documentation in the articles that you're writing. And I really encourage everyone to subscribe to your really excellent Substack site, Mujamma.com. m-u-j-a-m-m-a haraket h-a-r-a-k-e-t dot substack dot com to keep up to date with all of the wonderful work. But you've already indicated two future topics that I hope maybe we will have a chance to discuss. One about the kind of hacker groups. That's a fascinating, and I know you've written some things about these groups. And then another one, I think really on thinking about the relationships between resistance groups across secular Marxist, Leninist avowedly, those institutions, as well as the Islamic resistance. And maybe this will reframe some of our ways of thinking about the so-called incompatibilities or differences, but have a different perspective. So those, I hope you will come back to discuss those, but I want to thank you so much for this discussion and all the work that you've been doing.

Mujamma Haraket: It is my absolute pleasure. Thank you dearly for having me.

Adnan Husain: I will always be happy to come back. Wonderful. Well, I mean, with that, then I just want to wish listeners and watchers of the program, you know, peace with justice and solidarity to you all. Look out for upcoming episodes and inshallah, future editions of discussions with Mujammar Haraket on the extraordinary research and historical work he's doing. All the best. Salaam.